History of Marshfield, (Plymouth County) Massachusetts United States of America

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Daniel Webster, statesman and orator, was born in Salisbury, N.H., Jan. 18,1782; son of Capt. Ebenezer and Abigail (Eastman) Webster. The Websters were of Scotch extraction, immigrants to America about 1638. His father, the owner of a heavily mortgaged mountain farm which he had rescued from the wilderness and on which he had erected a mill, was a man of influence, had served in the French and Indian wars and when the Revolution was ushered in by the battle of Lexington raised a company of his neighbors and commanded them throughout the war for independence. After 1791 be served as associate judge of the Hillsborough county court of common pleas. He was a firm Federalist and opposed the French revolution and the Democracy of Jefferson. Daniel's mother, Abigail Eastman, was a strong woman mentally and physically, of Welsh extraction. Daniel, with his brother Ezekiel, two years his senior, attended the district school, worked upon the farm and tended the sawmill. In 1794 he entered Exeter academy, having at the time already read Hudibras, the Spectator and Pope's Homer, and committed the "Essay on Man" and much of the Bible to memory. He was prepared for college by the Rev. Samuel Wood and nine months at Phillips Andover academy, and in August,1797, matriculated at Dartmouth. While in college he delivered two or three occasional addresses which were published, and on the Fourth of July, 1800, he delivered to the citizens of Hanover his first public oration, in which occurred the passages: "Columbia stoops not to tyrants. Her spirit will never cringe to France. Neither a supercilious five-headed directory nor a gasconading pilgrim of Egypt will ever dictate terms of sovereignty to America." Before leaving Dartmouth he induced his father to send Ezekiel to college and trust to the advantages gained there for future financial help from his two boys. Daniel was graduated from Dartmouth in August, 1801, and that winter engaged in teaching school at Fryeburg, Maine, and with the money thus earned paid his brother's tuition at Dartmouth, enabling him to graduate in 1804. The same year Daniel received his master's degree in course and an honorary A.M. degree from Harvard. He became a law student in the office of Christopher Gore of Boston, and while so engaged was offered the clerkship of the Hillsborough county court, in which his father was an associate judge, with a salary which would place his father's family beyond the financial straits then experienced. With filial duty foremost in his mind Daniel went to his preceptor in law for his advice. Mr. Gore told him not to accept it as" he was not made to be a clerk," and after conveying to his father the disappointing news of his determination to continue his law studies he returned to Boston and was admitted to the bar in March, 1805, beginning practice at Boscawen, near Salisbury, N.H. In April, 1806, occurred the death of his father, whose debts Daniel announced his determination to assume. In 1807 he left his law practice at Boscawen to his brother and "hung out his shingle" in Portsmouth, the principal town of the state and the centre of its law practice. He was married May 29, or June 24, 1808, to Grace Fletcher of Salisbury. In 1812 he made a Fourth of July oration before the Washington Benevolent Society, in which he advocated a larger navy. In August he was sent as a delegate to the Rockingham county assembly and he was the author of the "Rockingham Memorial" opposing the war. The favor with which the memorial was received in New Hampshire secured his election as representative in the 13th congress in 1812, where he took his seat May 24, 1813, and he was given a place in the committee on foreign affairs of which John C. Calhoun was chairman. He was re-elected to the 14th congress in 1814 and was admitted to the bar of the U.S. supreme court. He opposed the war with Great Britain, but advocated the strengthening of the defences; opposed a tariff for protection on the ground that he did not wish to see the young men of the country shut out from external nature, and confined in factories with the whirl of spools and spindles, and the grating of rasps and saws constantly sounding in their ears. He favored specie payment and opposed the enlistment bill. When challenged by John Randolph to the "field of honor" he refused to meet him but declared himself "prepared at all times to repel in a suitable manner the aggression of any man who may presume upon such a refusal." His growing law practice induced him to remove to Boston in June. 1816, and after the close of his second term he retired from public life to take up the practice of law for the purpose of accumulating money then much needed to pay his debts and support his family. In September, 1817, he made his first great argument in the Dartmouth college case, and on March 10, 1818, made his final argument in that case before the U.S. supreme court, Washington. He spoke in Doric Hall, State House, Boston, Dec. 3, 1819, on the danger of the extension of slavery, and he was made chairman of a committee to present a memorial to congress. He was made a member of the state constitutional convention of Massachusetts in 1820, and the same year he pronounced his great oration at Plymouth to commemorate the landing of the Pilgrims, December 22. He was a representative from Boston by an almost unanimous election in the 18th and 19th congresses, 1823-27, taking his seat Dec. 1, 1823, and was made chairman of the judiciary committee by Speaker Clay. On Jan. 19, 1824, he delivered his speech in the house in favor of appointing a commissioner to Greece, and in March he spoke against the tariff of 1824. On June 17, 1825, he delivered his first Bunker Hill oration, and the next year, August 2, he delivered his eulogy on Adams and Jefferson in Faneuil Hall. He wore small clothes and an orator's gown, and was in the perfection of his manly beauty and strength, his unused manuscript lying on a table by his side. He was elected U.S. senator from Massachusetts in June, 1827; took his seat December 3, and was re-elected in 1833. His wife died in New York, Jan. 21, 1828, and on Dec. 12, 1829, he was married, secondly, to Caroline Le Roy of New York city, who brought him a considerable fortune. He delivered an address in April, 1828, for the benefit of the surviving officers of the American Revolution, and in May made his famous speech in the senate in favor of the tariff of 1828, and followed it by voting for "the tariff of abominations" making the grounds for his change of policy that his constituents in Massachusetts had invested their money in manufacturing on the faith that the government would protect those industries. On Jan. 20, 1830, he made his first answer to Senator Hayne of South Carolina, and on Jan. 26, 1830, made his great reply and argument against nullification, which became historical. He supported the bill introduced to enforce the act of 1828 in a strong speech, Feb. 8, 1833, and the bill called the "force bill" or "bloody bill," was passed and became a law, March 2. On February 16, he replied to Calhoun's nullification arguments, his reply being that the constitution was not a compact between sovereign states. He made a tour of the Western states in the summer of 1833, looking to his candidacy for the Presidency in 1836. The Massachusetts legislature nominated him for the Presidency in 1836, there being no national. convention that year; the Democratic national convention at Baltimore May 20, 1835, having named the Van Buren and Johnson ticket. The other candidates indicated by state choice were William Henry Harrison and John McLean of Ohio; Hugh L. White of Tennessee; Willie P. Mangum of South Carolina, which nominations, with that of Mr. Webster gave to the country five Whig candidates in 1836. McLean withdrew before the election, and the Whig electoral votes were divided, 73 going to Harrison, 26 to White, 14 to Webster and 11 to Mangum. He made a powerful oration at Niblo's Garden, New York city, March 15, 1837, on the general question of slavery, and in it be warned the South against seeking to extend the institution, or to endeavor to arrest the strong feeling that existed and had taken hold of the consciences of men, saying that "should it be attempted, he knew of nothing even in the constitution or in the Union itself which would not be endangered by the explosion that might follow." He was re-elected to the senate in January, 1839, and spent that summer in Europe. His political friends, when they saw the overwhelming popularity enjoyed by General Harrison, and that he was sure of the Presidential nomination, advised Webster to allow the use of his name for Vice-Presidential candidate, but he peremptorily declined. Harrison was made the Whig candidate by the national convention that assembled at Harrisburg, Pa., Dec. 4, 1839, and Senator Webster, although personally disappointed, made a vigorous campaign for Harrison and Tyler. He resigned his seat in the senate, Feb. 22, 1841, and when Harrison was inaugurated be accepted the cabinet position of secretary of state, and as such concluded a treaty with Portugal; negotiated the Ashburton treaty, which settled the northwestern boundary question between Great Britain and the United States; provided for the mutual extradition of criminals, and arranged for the suppression of the slave trade. [p.344] He defended the Ashburton treaty against his own party, standing by President Tyler when deserted by the other members of his cabinet. He resigned, however, in May, 1843, and returned to the practice of law in Boston and the enjoyment of his farm at Marshfield, Mass.. On June 17, 1843, he made his second Bunker Hill oration. He was not a candidate before the Whig national convention at Baltimore, May 1, 1844, but supported Henry Clay. Rufus Choate, who had been elected his successor in the U.S. senate, closed his term March 3, 1845, and Mr. Webster was elected his successor, taking the seat four days after the passage of the resolution annexing Texas, and on April 6-7, 1846, he made his speech on the justice of the expenditures made in negotiating the" Ashburton treaty." He helped to the peaceable settlement of the Oregon boundary, and in 1847 voted for the Wilmot proviso and opposed territorial aggrandizement in view of its disturbing the peace of the country on the slavery issue. He visited the Southern states in 1847 and his views on the rights of slaveholders appear to have modified, for while presenting the resolutions of the legislature of Massachusetts against its extension, he cautioned against the interference with the constitutional rights of the owners of slaves. He suffered a double loss in 1848 in the death of his daughter, Mrs. Appleton, in Boston, April 28, and of his son, Major Edward Webster, whose body was brought back from Mexico, where he had fallen in battle, and was buried May 3. Senator Webster was again a candidate for the Presidential nomination in 1848, but when the Whig national convention met at Philadelphia, June 7, and nominated Gen. Zachary Taylor, he refused the second place on the ticket against the advice of his political friends, and Fillmore was named, and in a speech at Marshfield, September 1, he expressed his disappointment emphatically by saying that the nomination of Taylor was "not fit to be made" but was dictated by "the sagacious, wise and farseeing doctrine of availability." On March 7, 1850, he made the most famous of his later speeches on the public square in front of the Revere House, Boston, Faneuil Hall having been refused his use. In this speech he favored the compromises offered by Henry Clay; dwelt upon the constitutional rights of the people of the slave states and made a legal defence of the Fugitive Slave law as proposed in the compromise. Senator Hoar (in 1899) attributed Webster's course at this time "not to a weaker moral sense but to a larger and profounder prophetic vision." and in his resistance to the acquisition of California Senator Hoar says: "He saw what no other man saw, the certainty of civil war." In 1850, when President Taylor died and Millard Fillmore succeeded to the Presidency, Webster was made Fillmore's secretary of state, which portfolio he accepted, July 23, 1850, resigning his seat in the senate July 22, Robert C. Winthrop filling it by appointment from July 30, 1850, to Feb. 7, 1851, and Robert Rantoul, Jr., who was elected his successor, taking the seat, Feb. 22, 1851, and completing the term, March 3, 1851. On Dec. 21, 1850, Webster wrote the Hulseman letter, in which he gave notice to the European powers that the United States was a great nation and as such had a right to express sympathy with any struggle for republican government. When the Whig national convention met at Baltimore, June 16, 1852, he was a candidate for the Presidential nomination and on the first ballot he received 29 votes, but on the 52d ballot Gen. Winfield Scott was nominated. Webster refused to support the Whig candidate, and requested his friends to vote for Franklin Pierce, the Democratic nominee'. In May, 1852, he was thrown from his carriage and seriously hurt. He was able to travel to Boston in July and to Washington for the last time in August, but on September 8 he returned to Marshfield. He received the honorary degree of LL.D. from the College of New Jersey in 1818, Dartmouth in 1823, Harvard in 1824, Columbia, 1824, and Allegheny college, 1840. Dartmouth college celebrated the centennial of his graduation Sept. 24-25, 1901, when the cornerstone of anew building known as Webster Hall was laid. His name in Class M, Rulers and Statesmen, received 96 votes and a place in the Hall of Fame for great Americans, October, 1900, standing second only to that of George Washington and equal to that of Abraham Lincoln. Twenty biographical sketches of Daniel Webster appeared in book form between 1831 and 1900 of more or less value to the student of history, but no really great "Life of Webster" had appeared. His works under the title Daniel Webster: Works, appeared in six octavo volumes in 1851, and his correspondence as Daniel Webster : Private Correspondence, Edited by Fletcher Webster appeared in 1857. A statue by Powell was placed in front of the Massachusetts State House; one by Ball in Central Park, New York; and a simple stone stands in the burial ground at Marshfield. He died at Marshfield, Mass., Oct, 24, 1852.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of Marshfield, (Plymouth County) Massachusetts

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